¹ Alexander Borodin: Prince Igor, piano score, original version, ed. Anna Bulycheva (Moscow: Classica XXI, 2012). The title is given in Russian and English; here, only the English version is cited.

² Notes 70, no. 4 (June 2014), 739–45.

³ See Muzïkal’naya nauka v yedinom kul’turnom prostranstve: IV mezhdunarodnaya internet-konferentsiya (Moscow: Gnesin Institute, 2014), 1–27, http://gnesinstudy.ru/?cat=13.

⁴ Iskusstvo muzïki: teoriya i istoriya / Art of Music: Theory and History, electronic journal of the Gosudarstvennyi institut iskusstvoznaniia (State Institute for Research in the Arts) 10–11 (double no., 2014), 5–35 http://imti.sias.ru/upload/iblock/d31/bylicheva.pdf. While the title is given in Russian and English, the article itself is in Russian, with only the briefest of summaries in English.

⁵ Revised date according to Elvira A. van Domburg, ‘Vtoraya simfoniya A. P. Borodina (k istorii redaktsii N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova i A. K. Glazunova)’, in Pamyati Anastasii Sergeyevnï Lyapunovoy, Peterburgskiy muzïkal’nïy arkhiv 9 (St Petersburg: Kompozitor, 2012), 207. Previously, the edition had been tentatively dated January 1877. Bulïchëva cites van Domburg’s date in her edition (pp. 3 and 189); see also Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 12.

⁶ Vasiliy Vasil’yevich Yastrebtsev, N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov: Vospominaniya V. V. Yastrebtseva, ed. Aleksandr Ossovskiy, vol. 1 (Leningrad: Gosudarstvenniy nauchno-issledovatel’skiy institut teatra, muzïki i kinematografii, 1959), 76.

⁷ The piano-duet version was republished by Alphonse Leduc, Paris, in 1891 (plate number A.L. 8688). The Leduc edition appears to be faithful to the original publication by Bessel’. See Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 9 n. 18. I only had access to Leduc’s edition.

⁸ Lloyd-Jones, David, ‘Towards a Scholarly Edition of Borodin’s Symphonies’, Soundings 6 (1977): 81–87 Google Scholar; Abraham, Gerald and Lloyd-Jones, David, ‘Borodin, Alexander Porfir’yevich’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, first edition, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. 3, 58 Google Scholar. Paragraph 4 of the article, which is cited here, is entirely credited to Lloyd-Jones.

⁹ Serge Dianin, Borodin, trans. Robert Lord (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 148–9 and 199; Naumovich Sokhor, Arnol’d, Aleksandr Porfir’yevich Borodin: zhizn’, deyatel’nost’, muzïkal’noye tvorchestvo (Moscow: Gosudarstevennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1965), 529–531 Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The ‘author’s version’ (in Bulïchëva’s edition) and the Rimsky-Korsakov/Glazunov version of this passage are displayed as musical examples side by side in Bulïchëva, ‘Orkestrovka Vtoroy simfonii Aleksandra Porfir’yevicha Borodina i problema avtorskogo stilya’, 24.

¹¹ According to David Lloyd-Jones, at least one of these performances was broadcast live; see Lloyd-Jones, ‘Towards a Scholarly Edition’, 87. Probably Lloyd-Jones obtained this information from Mravinsky himself.

¹² Valerian Mikhaylovich Bogdanov-Berezovskiy, Sovetskiy dirizhër: ocherk deyatel’nosti Ye. A. Mravinskogo (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1956), 164. Quoted after Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 8. It may be suspected that Bogdanov-Berezovsky also had studied the score. Bulïchëva subsequently discusses a 1967 recording by Konstantin Simonov in which the 1887 score appears conflated with elements from Borodin’s autographs and second-guessing by the conductor.

¹³ Pavel Aleksandrovich Lamm, ‘Vtoraya simfoniya A. P. Borodina (po avtografam kompozitora)’, Rossiyskiy gosudarstvenniy arkhiv literaturï i iskusstva (usually abbreviated RGALI), Moscow, f. 2743 op. 1 yed. khr. 6, fols 2–43. Most Russian archives use signatures of this pattern: ‘f’. stands for fond and denotes the archive of a particular person or institution; ‘op.’. stand for opis’, meaning inventory; ‘yed. khr’. stands for yedinitsa khraneniya, meaning storage item. ‘Op.’. is omitted if there is only one inventory per archive.

¹⁴ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 19–20.

¹⁵ Bulïchëva (p. 190) holds that the symphony was actually complete by December 1874, quoting a hitherto uninvestigated article by M.I. Sariotti, ‘Russkiye kompozitorï. Borodin, Kyui, Musorgskiy, Rimsky Korsakov i Chaykovskiy’, Vsemirnaya illyustratsiya 12, no. 26 (21 Dec. 1874 [2 Jan. 1875]).

¹⁶ Bulïchëva (‘Taynïye igrï’, 27–30) disputes Borodin’s claim and explains it as an excuse to keep the two movements because he felt he had to revise them before handing them to Nápravník.

¹⁷ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 17. It is somewhat surprising to see that her survey of reports from the concert does not include César Cui’s review in the daily Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 4 (16) March 1877, although it corroborates the other unfavourable accounts.

¹⁸ Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life, trans. Judah A. Joffe (London: Eulenburg, 1974), 187–8.

¹⁹ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 18.

²⁰ Performances with orchestras in Germany between 1877 and 1879 have sometimes been claimed (without giving details); see, for instance, Lloyd-Jones, ‘Towards a Scholarly Edition’, 87. Some years ago I tried to verify these performances, but it was to no avail, as neither Borodin’s letters nor the contemporaneous German press contain any traces of them. Richard Pohl’s review of the first German performance of Borodin’s First Symphony in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 26 (18 June 1880), 274, does not mention the Second Symphony at all (except that it mislabels the First ‘Second’) and expressly states: ‘As far as we know, Borodin is still completely unknown in Germany’. However, in 1877 Borodin acquainted Franz Liszt, whom he had just met, with the piano-duet version of the symphony, that is, he ordered a copy from Bessel’; see the letter to his wife, 12 July 1877; Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, ed. Sergey Dianin, vol. 2 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1936), 149 (letter no. 368). Borodin’s letter to his wife of 23 July 1877 (Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 2, 158–9 (letter no. 370), which includes an account of his second visit to Liszt, mentions read-throughs of the piano-duet version of the Second Symphony, which had arrived in the meantime, at Franz Liszt’s home in Weimar, and I strongly suspect that somebody mistook these for orchestral performances, which obviously never took place. Bulïchëva is aware of the piano performances at Liszt’s (‘Taynïye igrï’, 25, and also the motto to her edition of the symphony, p. 1), but does not comment on the alleged orchestral ones.

²¹ I made a similar statement in my doctoral dissertation: ‘One would have to study the varieties of paper and [Borodin’s] handwriting [which changed over time] … but methods like these have not been adopted by Russian Borodin scholars so far although they would lead to better results than the usual exegesis of the much later writings [treated as scripture, hence ‘exegesis’] by [Vladimir] Stasov and Rimsky-Korsakov’. Gaub, Albrecht, Die kollektive Ballett-Opera ‘Mlada’: Ein Werk von Kjui, Musorgskij, Rimskij-Korsakov, Borodin und Minkus (Berlin: Ernst Kuhn, 1998), 379 Google Scholar.

²² Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 18.

²³ Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay, My Musical Life, trans. Judah A. Joffe (London: Eulenburg, 1974), 187–188 Google Scholar.

²⁴ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 15.

²⁵ Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, ed. Sergey Dianin, vol. 3 (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoye muzykal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1949), 131–4. The seven abortive attempts, of which only the first is dated, are numbered 650–656; the final letter is numbered 657.

²⁶ Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 3, 132 (letter no. 654).

²⁷ Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 3, 132–4 (letters no. 655–657).

²⁸ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 31.

²⁹ Sergey Dianin’s explanation is, predictably, different: ‘Obviously, the hasty corrections in the score and in the parts left them in the chaotic state discussed in the present fragment’. Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 3, 349 (note 5 to letter no. 654).

³⁰ Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 3, 132–4 (letters no. 655–657).

³¹ The programme of the concert is reproduced in facsimile in Angelina Petrovna Zorina, Aleksandr Porfir’yevich Borodin (Moscow: Muzïka, 1988), between pages 96 and 97.

³² Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 4 (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoye muzykal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1950), 113.

³³ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 26.

³⁴ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 12–13.

³⁵ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 26.

³⁶ Lamm, ‘Vtoraya simfoniya’, 31. Lamm assumed that Borodin had new material (score and parts) copied for the performances in Belgium.

³⁷ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 33.

³⁸ Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 4, 113.

³⁹ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 33.

⁴⁰ Pis’ma A. P. Borodina, vol. 2, 158–9 (letter no. 370).

⁴¹ Quoted after Lloyd-Jones, ‘Towards a Scholarly Edition’, 86. Unfortunately, Lloyd-Jones does not cite a source for this information, essential though it be, and in an email communication to me of 3 April 2017 he found himself unable to name the source. Bulïchëva communicated to me (on 16 January 2017) that she has never seen a programme or poster of that performance.

⁴² Lamm, ‘Vtoraya simfoniya’, 32 and 34.

⁴³ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 24.

⁴⁴ Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 20.

⁴⁵ Date in users list attached to the files. Quoted after Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 24.

⁴⁶ Lloyd-Jones, ‘Towards a Scholarly Edition’, 85.

⁴⁷ Lloyd-Jones, ‘Towards a Scholarly Edition’, 85.

⁴⁸ When I asked him the question, he could not remember (communication via email of 3 April 2017).

⁴⁹ At this point, Bulïchëva adds a footnote: ‘However, Borodin’s markup in red pencil in the proofs of his symphonic picture In Central Asia for the publisher D. Rahter – A. Büttner (Glinka Museum, f. 45 yed. khr. 38) look somewhat different than the corrections in the proofs of the Andante, and there is an important peculiarity: instructions for the German engravers were done in German by Borodin’. However, Bulïchëva does not say whether Bessel’s engravers were Germans as well.

⁵⁰ Bobéth’s archives have since been acquired by the Hans von Bülow Society in Meiningen, Germany.

⁵¹ Gaub, Die kollektive Ballett-Opera ‘Mlada’. References to the sources of the symphony are found on pp. 381–3 and especially 568–9 (‘Handschrift 49’ to ‘Handschrift 51’). ‘Handschrift 49’ is the collection of sketches or discarded pages preserved in the Russian National Library (shelf-mark f. 94 yed. khr. 3); ‘Handschrift 50’ is another collection of sketches at the St Petersburg Conservatory (shelf-mark no. 2530/I); ‘Handschrift 51’ is a single leaf with sketches relating to Prince Igor, the Second Symphony, and (possibly) Mlada at the Russian National Library (shelf-mark f. 640 yed. khr. 1169). Abbreviated English translations of my descriptions of ‘Handschrift 49’ to ‘Handschrift 51’ (now styled ‘MS 49’–‘MS 51’) are found in Albrecht Gaub, ed., Mlada (1872): Scenes from a Collaborative Opera-Ballet by César Cui, Modest Musorgskii, Nikolai Rimskii-Korsakov, and Aleksandr Borodin, Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 67, (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2016), 277–8. Bulïchëva mentions all three manuscripts on p. 188 of her edition and discusses ‘Handschrift 51’ in some detail in footnote 1 of the same page.

⁵² Publication of this paragraph authorized by Lloyd-Jones via email on 3 April 2017. Bulïchëva insinuates that that Lloyd-Jones’s research methods were not entirely scrupulous: ‘One cannot rule out the possibility that when [Lloyd-Jones] wrote the quoted article [‘Towards a Scholarly Edition’] fifteen years later [after his research], he could not find his old notes and turned to Sokhor’s book’: Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 24. Lloyd-Jones’s interpretation of the evidence may be mistaken, of course, yet surely Bulïchëva’s condescending aside should not have made its way into print – or onto the web, for that matter.

⁵³ Zorina, Aleksandr Porfir’yevich Borodin, between pages 96 and 97. Zorina does not identify the source, but Bulïchëva’s critical report (pp. 188 and 190) makes this clear. I am not aware of further published facsimiles from the symphony.

⁵⁴ See John Wiley, Roland, Tchaikovsky, The Master Musicians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 142–145 Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Bogdanov-Berezovskiy, Sovetskiy dirizhër, 164. Quoted after Bulïchëva, ‘Taynïye igrï’, 8.